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I have a plane trip coming up, and with it, my standard pre-flight anxiety.

It’s not fear of flying (I don’t love hurtling through low orbit, separated from death by a few inches of aluminum and plexiglass, but I tolerate it)—it’s fear that God may put someone in the next seat for me to evangelize.

Some people—extroverts, probably—relish the opportunity to witness, but not me. I’m just no good at it. Give me a theological point to argue, an enemy of the Faith to fight...

Some people balk at the use of liberal and conservative in a religious context. They argue that these are political terms only, and that questions of religious belief and practice are too varied, too nuanced, to capture with broad-stroke labels.

I’m not one of those people. Words can have different senses in different contexts, so there should be no problem re-purposing them from one to the next. And, sure, I agree that beliefs can be complex and so labels are...

My blog post last week elicited more feedback than I’m used to, running roughly three to one against my assertion that Catholic parents ought not to abandon the Boy Scouts of America over its recent decision no longer to exclude self-identified homosexual boys. Most of the naysayers repeated—in some cases, in more thoughtful and developed ways—the two basic objections I noted in my...

It would seem at first that the hard work of evangelization is getting people to make the leap into the Tiber. Once they’re convicted that the Catholic Church offers the fullness of Christian truth, getting them to complete their swim across should be, relatively speaking, cake. Right?

Ye converts out there, forgive this cradle Catholic for his naiveté. Because apparently it’s not so easy—at least, so says theologian and apologist Taylor Marshall,...